Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 340 Items

Ten years of keeping on! Höga Nord Rekords celebrates a decade of deep diving into both local and global pools of underground music. During this 10 year long period, Höga Nord Rekords has proven that music both has high cultural relevance as well as supplying instant kicks. Common for the label mates are the slightly screwed approach to genre and sound, with creativity and surprising takes on song structures and tonality.

The label has from day one searched for, and signed creative people making music that is not for everyone. Everyone is a very distinct and precise measure, but you get the point: Höga Nords reach has and never will be the mainstream and the well-known, rather going deep and wide underground, reaching those who need music to survive and not just as a fund to pass time.

This box set titled “I’m Ten Years Ahead Of My Time” includes not only the 7 inches #41 to #50 it also includes a t-shirt and a patch.

No need to pay top dollar for top value – Get ten years ahead and an effect that will last forever with Höga Nord Rekords and this exclusive 7” - box set!

5x12" Box Set

NOTE: INCL. DOWNLOAD CODE AND SURPRISE ITEMS. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. BOX WILL BE OPENED FOR SHIPPING TO AVOID SEAM-SPLIT.

In the heart of Offenbach, where the city's pulse synchronizes with the beat of the night, stands the illustrious Robert Johnson Club. For a quarter of a century, it has stood as a bastion of sonic exploration, a sanctuary for those who seek solace in the rhythm, and a beacon of inspiration for the global electronic music community. As it proudly raises its glass to toast 25 years of unrivaled musical excellence, the echoes of countless memories reverberate through its storied halls. To honor this landmark anniversary, „Live at Robert Johnson“ presents a kinda like masters blueprint of sound: "Tell Me Something Good - 25 Years of Famous When Dead!" This compilation, aptly named after the club's mantra, serves not only as a celebration of its rich history but also as a testament to the enduring legacy of the artists who have graced its stage. Crafted with meticulous attention to detail, each track on the compilation is a sonic journey unto itself—a symphony of beats and melodies that weave together to tell the story of Robert Johnson's evolution over the past quarter-century. From the pulsating rhythms of underground techno to the ethereal melodies of deep house, the compilation encapsulates the club's eclectic spirit and unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of electronic music. But beyond the music lies something deeper—an intangible energy that permeates every aspect of Robert Johnson's existence. It's the sense of camaraderie that binds together the club's patrons and artists alike, the shared experience of losing oneself in the music, and the profound sense of belonging that transcends language and culture. As the compilation reverberates through the speakers, it serves as a rallying cry—a call to arms for all who have ever felt the transformative power of music. It's a reminder that, even in the darkest of times, there is beauty to be found in the simple act of coming together and losing oneself in the rhythm of the night. So let us raise our voices in celebration of Robert Johnson Club and the indelible mark it has left on the world of electronic music. Here's to 25 years of passion, of creativity, and of "something good" that will echo through the ages for generations to come.

Sound over music. Micro Ambient Music" was collected as a memorial to the music of the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was obsessed with small things in his later years.

This compilation album was assembled by Hakkin Date, who is also an artist himself. It was awarded the German Music Critics Award 2023 in the category of Electronic & Experimental. The definition of ambient music, which can be played to create silence, is wide-ranging. Among them, Ryuichi Sakamoto's pursuit is evident in the music of his later years, when he began to make extensive use of field recordings, noise, and other non-instrumental sounds. Micro Ambient Music" is a memorial work spun by musicians who revere Sakamoto's music of that period. This is a collection of music that uses non-instrumental sounds to bring silence.

»White Noise« is a cooperation project between raster-media and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. Artistic sound projects generated in the context of the scientific research institute will appear at irregular intervals. The themes and questions of empirical aesthetics research are taken up, questioned or challenged in very different ways. »White Noise« is conceived as an audio archive of the Mpiea artists in residence which records the artistic works on vinyl and documents the respective concepts and working methods in text form.

Victioria Keddie’s »Pshal P’shaw« (white noise #002) is a multimedia exploration delving into phonetic expression’s auditory and rhythmic nuances of phonetic expressions through an amalgamation of text, sound, video, data, and customized learning software. Drawing inspiration from the painter and architectural theorist Hermann Finsterlin who made speculative architectural renderings, the project originated during a residency at the Max Planck Institute of Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt in 2023.

The long-awaited LP reissue of "Phenomenal Luciferin", a 1998 solo album by Naoki Zushi that has been rediscovered from a modern new age perspective in recent years, is now available on Sad Disco with the full support of Org Records and the artist!!

Mount Athos, known as the «Holy Mountain,» is a monastic peninsula in northeastern Greece, central to Eastern Orthodox monasticism for over a millennium. Its twenty monasteries house around 2,000 monks dedicated to prayer and worship, which songs have echoed across the Aegean Sea for centuries, heard only by visiting pilgrims, isolated from conventional time and global events.

After several years of research, and several visits to the retired community, we are happy to present our new project «Athos : Echoes from the Holy Mountain» dedicated to this liturgic music and repertoire that seems to be evolving outside the usual boundaries of time and space. Rooted in Byzantine chant, this a cappella tradition essential to monastic life featuring intricate yet serene melodies designed to facilitate prayer and contemplation, using a system of modes and scales to create a meditative atmosphere.

Trans-disciplinary, this effort of documentation also comprehends an artistic re-interpretation aspect inviting contemporary Greek and foreign artists to reflect on the subject.

A musical compilation which captures original field recordings from the 1960s and from today capturing the essence of liturgical music on Mount Athos, but also new compositions inspired by them by artists such as Holy Tongue (UK), Jay Glass Dubs (GR), Prins Emanuel & Inre Kresten Grupp (SWE), Jimi Tenor (FI), Gilb’r (FR), Daniel Paleodimos (GR), Esma & Murat Ertel (TUR) and Organza Ray (GR/US).

A trilingual book in English, Greek and French, featuring essays, articles, photographs and artistic comissions reflecting around the theme giving a voice to contributors such as , Stratos Kalafatis, Theodore Psychoyos, Tefra90, Father Damaskinos Ulkinuora, Prof. Thomas Apostolopoulos, Makar Tereshin, Phaedra Douzina-Bakalaki, Michelangelo Paganopoulos and Alberto Cameroni.

The release of the book and the record will be followed by a cycle of exhibitions and conferences, deploying FLEE’s year-long research on Mount Athos, as well as its numerous commissioned artworks.

Tracklist

A1 Volta Semantron (Inre Kretsen Grupp & Prins Emanuel)
A2 Athos Dub (Holy Tongue)
A3 Garden of Kibele (Esma & Murat Ertel)
A4 Doxology (Daniel Paleodimos)

B1 Idän Kuoromiehet (Jimi Tenor)
B2 Synaptic Riddles (Jay Glass Dubs)
B3 L'île Météore (Gilb'r)
B4 I Swim In Your Dreams (Organza Ray)

C1 Vatopedi Semantron Vespers (Gregoriou Monastery)
C2 Axion Estin, Mode Plagal B (Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir)
C3 Christos Anesti, Mode Plagal A ((Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir)
C4 Theoteke Parthene, Mode Plagal A (Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir)
C5 Doxologia Chourmouzioy, Mode Varys (Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir)
C6 Osoi Eis Christon, Mode Plagal A (Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir)
C7 Tas Esprinas Manouel Chrysafis, Mode Plagal A (Daniilaioi Brotherhood Choir)

D1 Doxastikon idiomelon, Mode Plagal A (Father Lazaros of Gregoriou Monastery)
D2 Anoixantos Sou; Koukouzelis, Mode Plagal D (Father Germanos of Vatopedi Monastery)
D3 Cherouvical Hymn, Third Mode (Iviron Monastery Choir)
D4 Axion Estin, Seventh Mode (Father Antipas)
D5 Koinonikon, Mode Plagal A (Simonopetra Monastery Choir)

The Stanley Parable may be satire, but its artistry is sincere. Developer Crows Crows Crows understood that on a fundamental level, in order for its scathing deconstruction of interactive storytelling to really hit, The Stanley Parable had to feel like a polished, impressive piece of narrative fiction, in and of itself. That polish is present everywhere in the game, from its stark, corporate-approved visuals to its superb voice acting, to its extraordinary soundtrack.

The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra, Yiannis Ioannides, Christiaan Bakker, and Tom Schley all contributed pieces to this indelible score. The resulting product is an eclectic mix of whimsical orchestral tunes, surprisingly tense ambient sounds, and heroically inspiring themes, sure to stir something deep within your formerly settled soul. Parody, tribute, and unexpectedly original moments of brilliance are present across the tracklist here in equal measure, each working towards the same cohesive final score.

Now, we at iam8bit are here to bring that very same score to you, presented on wax, with all of the care and consideration it deserves. Introducing The Stanley Parable 2xLP, a collection of the very best songs from the hallmark indie title, spread across two discs and pressed on 100% recycled black wax.

Lovely designers, Dominik Johann and William Pugh, crafted the cover art, which, much like the game itself (and indeed the soundtrack, too) is understated and brilliant — a loving tribute to Stanley’s possibly-traitorous sole companion, The Reassurance Bucket. It makes a mighty fine companion to your very own commemorative The Stanley Parable Collectible Bucket, if we do say so ourselves. And what’s more, that art is printed on recycled, eco-friendly packaging.

Now’s your chance to take home a piece of indie game history. Don’t miss out!

20% of net proceeds from your Stanley Parable purchase will be donated to the non-profit charity 350.org to fight climate change.

A beautiful and distorted dream of drum samples, jazz, swing, noise and bliss by Harsh Noise giant, Masami Akita (Merzbow), remastered for the first time since its original release in 2002. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this incredible albu we are doing a limited second edition, gatefold, vinyl pressing on white/ pink colored vinyl limited to 300 copies worldwide. It includes updated artwork by the artist. Consider by many a landmark album and a turning point in Merzbow’s discography, Merzbeat serves as a powerful introduction to the world of experimental music.

We are proud to announce a new edition of Door Open at 8 AM, Masami Akita's powerful masterpiece of melted jazz/noise, on red colored vinyl. This will be a limited edition of 300 copies Worldwide. Regarded as one of Masami’s best work, Door Open at 8 AM combines the harsh noise world into a jazz sample driven world, creating a blueprint of what experimental compositions could achieve.

Recital presents an artists’ record from the two giants Richard Hamilton and Dieter Roth. Hamilton (1922-2011) is revered as the father of British Pop Art as both theorist and practitioner, in addition to famously designing the artwork for The Beatles’ White Album. Dieter Roth (1930-1998) was a Swiss German artist who blithely ignored all artistic boundaries and aesthetic dictums. His oeuvre includes hundreds of artist books, almost half a thousand prints, sculptures, multiples and records, all balanced between magnetic playfulness and self-deprecating paranoia. Roth also ran his own record/book press Dieter Roth's Verlag and was a major force in the reckless improvisational music group Selten Gehörte Musik (1973-1979).

The two artists most significant collaborations happened between 1976 and 1978, beginning with a series of 74 paintings in which they reworked each other’s art. The paintings were made for an exhibition for dogs (as suggested by the late Marcel Broodthaers, to whom the works were dedicated) in Cadaqués, Spain. Hamilton and Roth then produced the catalogue Collaborations of Ch. Rotham with reproductions of all the paintings alongside four brilliant new collaborative texts. The narrative of the texts sprung from the “fairy story” (Hamilton) quality that emerged from these dog paintings – a hallucinatory tapestry of sausages, gestating giants, Sancho Panza, Don Quixote, and a donkey. Together they gallop, humorous and beautifully absurd, across the wild field of an imaginary seaside backdrop with endless garbled iterations of ever-mutating names riddled with mad typos.

For these recordings the individual texts were read by Roth and Hamilton, actor friend Duncan Smith, and a huge cast of British artists for the final play Die Grosse Bockwurst, performed at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1977. The recordings were first released on cassette on the Audio Arts label in 1978, and have now been remastered from the original ¼″ tapes for this double vinyl edition.

Also included are two booklets: one is a new essay written for this edition by artist and co-producer Malcolm Green (Red Sphinx, Atlas Press), alongside full reproductions of the Roth / Hamilton collaborative Ch. Rotham texts. Thanks to Björn Roth, Rita Donagh, Hansjörg Mayer, William Furlong, Tate Modern, and Hauser & Wirth.

Limited edition double-vinyl record of 300 copies in full color gatefold sleeve with over 70 minutes of audio recordings. Including two booklets: a 16-page new essay on Roth & Hamilton by Malcolm Green that includes new Roth translations, and a 20-page complete reproduction of the collaborative Ch. Rotham texts.

Special Edition includes a Cd-r of an interview program with the producers of "Beam Penetration" in 1970. At the end of the program, the Flower Travellin' Band appeared with motorcycles and performed in the studio. Also includes insert with English translation of the interview. Expo 70, held in Osaka, was a pivotal event for the Japanese people and their relationship with the rest of the world, demonstrating both the nation’s ongoing economic recovery from World War Two and the creative spirit of Japanese society and its artists. The event gained international acclaim for its adventurous architectural design, visual art and electronic music. Some of Japan’s most renowned composers were involved, but also present were the now-legendary rockers, the Flower Travellin' Band. A series of performances, billed as “Night Events” were held at the Expo; the most radical of these was "Beam Penetration and Mad Computer, plus the Minimal Sound of Motorcycles”, but its anti-establishment feel and general madness took the Expo organizers by surprise and it was cancelled after only one night, despite being scheduled for a longer run.

An air of myth developed around the event, but a recording of the event has been discovered and this release is the result. And what an event it was: a night-time sound-bomb with a fabled band, electronic sound and 50 motorcycles with horns blaring, spotlights, electronic billboards and a robot ― all flashing, roaring and howling at the night sky. This release comprises a CD, a 10-inch record with fold-out sleeve and large obi, plus fascinating notes in Japanese and English by Kenichi Yasuda, an expert on Japanese rock music, and Koji Kawasaki, a renowned researcher of Japanese electronic music, as well as rare photos.

Ahn Chi-haeng is a living legend of Korea's old-school gayo scene. Cutting his teeth on the 8th US Army entertainment circuit in the 1960s, he went on to lead the popular soft rock band Young Sound in the 1970s. He then established his own production company Anta Production, where he reigned as a hitmaker with the Midas touch until the early 1990s. The series of Buddhist sutras he released at the age of 60 were playfully experimental, affirming his identity as a devout Buddhist while also channeling his professional knack for creativity. In contrast to conventional sutra recordings, Ahn opted to create something that could be enjoyed as well, adding Hip-Hop beats and guitar parts. With the help of the chorus unit 'The Siddharettes', Ahn recorded four such records in 2004 alone. Originally intended for a small Buddhist audience, eventually came to be rediscovered a decade later by younger listeners who shared the recordings through social networks. The few CD-format copies that had been released only sporadically were very hard to come by. Here at Beatball, we've steadily reissued various works from Ahn's back catalogue. And given his stature as a composer and producer, we felt that his solo releases also deserved proper attention. This has led us to recollect and reissue his most prominent sutra series, starting off with. We selected 6 original sutras from the definitive double CD edition released in 2004, with impeccable mastering by Dave Cooley lending presence and liveliness to the beats.

Japanese composer Hiroko Matsuzaki began her classic music career as a flutist, and from 1985 to 1987 she worked as a studio musician as a flute/synthesiser player based in London, gaining an excellent reputation abroad without passing through the Japanese music scene. Simon Jeffs of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra heard this work and decided to participate in German electronic musician Rhodelius' Pink, Blue and Amber. This is the first time reissuing the lost work she produced only 100 copies before she left for the UK in 1985 , entitled Mother-Of-Pearl Box. This world-standard masterpiece was born in Japan during the rise of ambient music in the late 1980s, when house and techno were expanding globally with the rise of house and techno.

Miasmah Recordings presents the posthumous release of this double album of the final work by experimental composer Marcus Fjellström, titled The Last Sunset of the Year. Collected by Marcus' friends and colleagues Erik K. Skodvin and Dave Kajganich, this release brings together music written and produced during Marcus' tenure as composer for the first season of the AMC anthology series The Terror, which told the story of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage.

That said, The Last Sunset of the Year is, by design, not a soundtrack to the show. Dave Kajganich writes in the album’s liner notes: “Some of the pieces will be familiar to those who know The Terror (though in some cases in different forms), but many other pieces are being made available here for the first time. The selected pieces have a unity unto themselves, and we feel strongly that this release should be taken not as a companion to the show, but as Marcus Fjellström's final album, on its own terms. We’ve presented these pieces without titles, except for titling the four movements of the journey they suggest. It is a journey that evokes the mystery, grandeur, and desolation of the Arctic, and articulates the spiritual and existential implications of traveling there. In many ways, The Last Sunset of the Year goes further, and deeper, than the show ever could, presenting a remarkable sonic line from contented exploration, to staggering decline, to death—and even to a final vista beyond death.”

Kajganich reached out to begin discussing the idea of this release with Skodvin, back in 2017, after Marcus’ death, but before the series had premiered. In the years since, Dave and Erik have Zoomed and emailed back and forth hundreds of times, studying all seventy-five of the pieces Marcus wrote for the show in all their forms (as many as six or seven versions to a piece), to winnow down a final list of pieces to include. The most difficult phase of the process, Kajganich reveals in the notes, was understanding the best way to sequence the tracks. It required listening to many different track orders and paying close attention to how each order created a slightly different identity for the album through their specific juxtapositions and dynamics. “In a way I can’t fully articulate, it was very much as though Erik and I were having a final, deeply felt and joyous conversation with Marcus himself about the interior lives of these pieces,” Kajganich says.

The album’s title comes from a moment in the show when a group of Victorian sailors who are trapped in winter pack ice, suffering dwindling psychological resources and supplies, stand on the deck of one of the doomed ships to watch the sun rise above the horizon for a moment, and then immediately set in the last sunset of the year before six weeks of darkness, an event which, even through the lens of their inevitable coming losses, could still be viewed as something astonishing and beautiful. None of those men could know, nor can we, what waits for us across the line of death, but in The Last Sunset of the Year, Marcus seems to have had a notion.

Expo 70, held in Osaka, was a pivotal event for the Japanese people and their relationship with the rest of the world, demonstrating both the nation’s ongoing economic recovery from World War Two and the creative spirit of Japanese society and its artists. The event gained international acclaim for its adventurous architectural design, visual art and electronic music. Some of Japan’s most renowned composers were involved, but also present were the now-legendary rockers, the Flower Travellin' Band. A series of performances, billed as “Night Events” were held at the Expo; the most radical of these was "Beam Penetration and Mad Computer, plus the Minimal Sound of Motorcycles”, but its anti-establishment feel and general madness took the Expo organizers by surprise and it was cancelled after only one night, despite being scheduled for a longer run.

An air of myth developed around the event, but a recording of the event has been discovered and this release is the result. And what an event it was: a night-time sound-bomb with a fabled band, electronic sound and 50 motorcycles with horns blaring, spotlights, electronic billboards and a robot ― all flashing, roaring and howling at the night sky. This release comprises a CD, a 10-inch record with fold-out sleeve and large obi, plus fascinating notes in Japanese and English by Kenichi Yasuda, an expert on Japanese rock music, and Koji Kawasaki, a renowned researcher of Japanese electronic music, as well as rare photos.